Marcus Aurelius: “A man’s true delight is to do the things he was made for.”

I don’t think we are each “made” for a particular vocation or calling.

But we are all made to be authentic human beings.

We are made for connection. We thrive as members of groups, as citizens of tribes, as sisters, brothers, fathers, and mothers.

We shine most brightly when we are a part of something bigger than just ourselves.

We are made for adventure, for journeys, for quests — literal and metaphorical.

We are made to be useful. We are adapted to solve problems and make a difference.

We are made to fully inhabit our bodies. Agility and strength and physical skill are coded into us. Those attributes may be asleep in many or even most, but humans are more than just a brain inhabiting a vehicle.

Walk more. Breathe mindfully. Move intently. Get stronger.

Un-numb your five senses.

We are made for curiosity and mystery and awe.

And for play and laughter.

And for wonder and delight.

Reflect on the moments of greatest delight in your life. Drill down to the core of that delight. Make room for more of that in your authentic human life.

In spite of a steady stream of bad news and foreboding events, there’s not a better time to be alive in human history than right now.

On the whole we are safer, healthier, more educated, more knowledgeable, more prosperous, and more secure than any generation of humans before us.

“But,” you say, “look at all the people saying and doing bad things. Look at all the suffering and injustice in the world. Look at the fragility of our planet.”

Well, go fight for justice. Provide relief where you can to those who are suffering. Protect our planet. Do good and be good and make the world around you a kinder place.

Let the circumstances that challenge us summon the heroic within us.

The century ahead is filled with unprecedented potential for progress and for peril.

The previous century was marked by both the greatest triumphs and the most shameful transgressions and tragedies of human history so far. But where we are today is markedly better than where we were one hundred years ago.

What do the decades ahead hold for us?

Our story is unwritten. We get to decide how we will respond to the obstacles and opportunities rising before us.

But we are more fortunate and more prepared to push humanity forward than any generation that came before.

“When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them.”

What if I were intentional about looking for the good in those around me?

My wife’s generosity and her compassion for others regularly humble me and challenge me to give more and care more.

The college students I work with bring energy and humor and innocence that remind me not to be such a serious old man.

My daughters see in me a bigger and better person than I know myself to be. I want to become who they think I already am.

The work ethic, the patience, the common sense and common decency that I encounter from colleagues, friends, and strangers every day should move me to be better and do better.

These qualities usually pass by without my noticing, and so, too, do the gifts I could be receiving.

But if I really looked and intently focused on the ways others shine, I couldn’t help but be encouraged. And if I let them know what I see, they would be encouraged in return.

Go out of your way to warm yourself at the fire in the hearts of others. Make a habit of acknowledging and thanking and spurring on the good you’ve been given.

This remarkable feature in The New Yorker by David Remnick recounts his inside access to President Obama in the days after the election. It is an extraordinary bit of writing and a bittersweet, yet hopeful take on the President’s reaction to this election.

There is a lot to process in the President’s analysis of the state of the nation and what’s ahead for us. But, as a father who had to explain the results last week to my two dismayed daughters, I especially appreciated this:

How did he speak with his two daughters about the election results, about the post-election reports of racial incidents? “What I say to them is that people are complicated,” Obama told me. “Societies and cultures are really complicated. . . . This is not mathematics; this is biology and chemistry. These are living organisms, and it’s messy. And your job as a citizen and as a decent human being is to constantly affirm and lift up and fight for treating people with kindness and respect and understanding. And you should anticipate that at any given moment there’s going to be flare-ups of bigotry that you may have to confront, or may be inside you and you have to vanquish. And it doesn’t stop. . . . You don’t get into a fetal position about it. You don’t start worrying about apocalypse. You say, O.K., where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward.”

The whole article is fascinating. It’s well worth a read, or two.

I was going to close by saying how much I will miss President Obama, his class and character and wit and his keen, poetic way with words. But, now, I don’t think he will be as removed from the eye of the storm as he had anticipated or hoped. He is needed now in a new way, as a counterpoint to what is to come and as a beacon for what can be. I imagine he will not ride quietly off into the sunset any time soon.

“I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” –Franklin Roosevelt

This is from a time when fascism was all the rage and from a man who helped move us forward and past it.

The trend towards an even kinder and more enlightened society remains powerful. But progress is not inevitable.

Bettering our lot takes commitment and action and vigilance and a bracing clear-sightedness.

“Lift me up and hurl me. Wherever you will. My spirit will be gracious to me there—gracious and satisfied—as long as its existence and actions match its nature. Is there any reason why my soul should suffer and be degraded—miserable, tense, huddled, frightened? How could there be?”

Fling me anywhere and into anything. I should be able to be at peace no matter where I land. If I can willingly accept what is as though I had chosen circumstances to be just as they are, then I can act with clarity and firm purpose.

I can choose to respond to even the most undesirable circumstances without the burden of self-pity, without whining and blaming and without posting annoying, self-indulgent ramblings on social media.

Disappointment and struggle and the vast shortcomings of your fellow humans are your allies in shaping you into the person you need to become.

Grow up, man. Comfort is overrated. Triumph should be hard-won, but peace is always present no matter the outcome.

I just finished reading Nike CEO Phil Knight’s memoir, Shoe Dog, which tells the story of the creation of his now iconic company.

Knight’s story is compelling and candid and gratifyingly straightforward. He makes himself vulnerable and doesn’t pretend to be a sage or saint.

I was hooked in the foreword by his telling of an epiphany moment, when in his early twenties out for a run in the woods he decided how he wanted his life to unfold:

“I had an aching sense that our time is short, shorter than we ever know, short as a morning run, and I wanted mine to be meaningful. And purposeful. And creative. And impor­tant. Above all . . . different.

I wanted to leave a mark on the world.

I wanted to win.

No, that’s not right. I simply didn’t want to lose.

And then it happened. As my young heart began to thump, as my pink lungs expanded like the wings of a bird, as the trees turned to greenish blurs, I saw it all before me, exactly what I wanted my life to be. Play.

Yes, I thought, that’s it. That’s the word. The secret of happiness, I’d always suspected, the essence of beauty or truth, or all we ever need to know of either, lay somewhere in that moment when the ball is in midair, when both boxers sense the approach of the bell, when the runners near the finish line and the crowd rises as one. There’s a kind of exuberant clarity in that pulsing half second before winning and losing are decided. I wanted that, whatever that was, to be my life, my daily life.

…What if there were a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time, instead of working? Or else to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing.”

Lovely, right?

And it’s a great start to the book, propelling the reader into a story that is filled with the kinds of ups and downs you might expect in a career and a company of such magnitude.

The book is devoted mostly to the Nike origin story and the people Knight surrounded himself with in the very beginning in the 1960s and 70s as they created the worldwide juggernaut that Nike eventually became.

Nike came perilously close to not making it out of its infancy. But Knight and his team were resilient and persistent and savvy enough to beat the odds and create a company that resonates beyond even its products.

As business books go, this one is refreshingly readable with some worthwhile insights whether your aim is to be a titan of industry or just the captain of your own fate.

His book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, was a compelling challenge to quit trying to find your elusive vocational passion and instead focus on obtaining the kind of mastery that leads to genuine career fulfillment. (Pick a career path you wouldn’t mind getting really good at and stick with it for a while.)

His most recent book, Deep Work, is a wake up call that most of us are doing work wrong. Busyness is not the same as effectiveness. He exhorts us to escape the trivial distractions that drain our time and attention and instead block out time and space for focused, deep work.

Now he’s shared his recent TEDx Talk that is a provocative encouragement to quit social media altogether.

He makes a solid argument. Social media is primarily entertainment. And it’s particularly, deviously addictive and distracting.

Weeks ago I deleted the Facebook and Instagram apps from my phone, and I don’t miss them.

Tweetbot, though, is still on my home screen and is my most used app by far. Whenever I get even the slightest bit restless, it’s off to Twitter I go. I can disappear there for a long time, mindlessly scrolling, hypnotized by whatever others are tweeting at the moment, clicking links that lead me further into interesting if not important diversions.

I have unearthed some real insights this way, but most of my time browsing internet time-sinkholes is sadly unaccounted for by meaningful results.

I’m not ready to delete my social media accounts. But I can put a hedge around my attention and structure my time more rigidly to get real work done.

I’ve found that my best work comes after I’ve spent around 30-45 minutes ramping up my focus without taking breaks to check email or Twitter. It’s like I need that warm up time before flow sets in and then magic can happen.

Two hours can fly by once I get in that zone. And that zone is a happy place to be and exponentially more productive and more fertile for breakthroughs than ten times as much time spent flitting about the internet.

Quit social media? Maybe.

But at least shrink its hold on your attention and on the little time you have to make something worthwhile each day.

I regularly bring up the Hubble Deep Field image when I speak to audiences, especially high school students. It never fails to get a reaction when I tell the story then display the Deep Field slide.

Vox.com posted a video feature last week telling the story of how the Deep Field image was captured.

In an empty speck the size of a pinhead in the night sky Hubble found thousands of galaxies.

It showed us just how vast and gloriously, mysteriously interesting the universe is.

If you need a dose of perspective, look up into the night sky and see how small you are. But see also that you are part of — a wonderfully conscious part of — a grand universe filled with more to learn than we ever could in the limited time we have.

“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.” –Epictetus

So much of what weighs on me is beyond my control. Maybe most of my worries, actually.

You do have control over your initiative and effort and mindset and what merits your attention, and over your response to things that lie beyond your control.

Turn your attention away from the noise of events outside of your control. No need to fret over the news, constantly hitting refresh on your news feeds to see what additional calamity you need to stress about.

Look closely at what you can control, and get busy putting your attention and effort there.

“If an action or utterance is appropriate, then it’s appropriate for you. Don’t be put off by other people’s comments and criticism. If it’s right to say or do it, then it’s the right thing for you to do or say. The others obey their own lead, follow their own impulses. Don’t be distracted. Keep walking. Follow your own nature, and follow Nature—along the road they share.”

Follow your own nature.

And follow Nature.

I’m convinced that capital “N” Nature, and my own nature which flows from it, should be my guide.

Stay in sync with the way things are. Don’t try to force a system of someone’s devising onto the model that Nature has so elegantly and organically displayed all around.

When in doubt, look to the real world. You are not an alien. You are product of this reality, even if you have the illusion that you are somehow separate.

Nature is our source and can be our guide. It is in you as much as you are in it.